Putting the "blah" in "blog" since 2010

Monthly Archives: August 2010

Most blogs probably have a first post talking about it being the first post in the blog. But I shall entirely avoid mentioning that this is the first post, so as not to bore all the people who come to read this blog with such an inane observation. They can already see that this is the first post, and don’t need a discussion about it. However, I will warn you not to devote large amounts of time to searching for the previous post, because there isn’t one. But that is all I need say on the topic.

I have wanted to have a blog for a while now, but could not think of a good name. As you can see at the top of the page, this is no longer an issue. Now I just face the formidable task of writing a blog that lives up to the name (which, by the way, is inspired by nedroid.com, ducks, and John Bellairs).

I will discuss awesome things such as speculative fiction, technology, and European history. Occasionally, I might post things I have written (things that aren’t blog entries, I mean. Obviously, I must post a blog entry in every blog entry). These will be short stories or maybe even poems if I think of any funny ones.

The new Kindle will be out this month! I am excited. It is just in time for the release of Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, although Macmillan has priced the e-book at $14.99, which is almost as much as the hardcover is on Amazon. This removes the book from the “impulse buy” price range for many people. The publisher’s idea is that now people will run out and buy the hardcover instead. Now that the Kindle is becoming much more affordable and widespread, the increase in sales from the convenience of the Kindle platform could easily offset the loss in hardcover sales. The really ironic thing is that publishers raised prices because Apple told them they could. Apple’s influence here is ironic because Apple’s e-reader, the iPad, is suitable for magazines and maybe textbooks with diagrams, but not for serious reading. For a novel, a computer screen like the iPad’s LCD just doesn’t cut it for most people. The Kindle is so successful because its screen looks like paper and is thus easy on the eyes, like a real book.

Revenons à nos moutons. The new Kindle’s screen is even better than before, and fixes my biggest gripe with earlier models: the color of the plastic body. My old Kindle’s screen looked great outdoors, but the white borders would reflect a lot of light and blind me while I was trying to read. The new graphite color will fix that.

I’d like to conclude by encouraging everyone to watch Inception while it is theaters. It is transcendently awesome. It’s my favorite movie ever by quite a large margin.